


Guilty as Charged

by Paratale



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst, Coda, Deleted Scenes, Episode: s07e23 Extreme Measures, M/M, highkey pining, like as in based off an actual deleted scene that these fuckers wrote and never shot, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 18:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10927677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paratale/pseuds/Paratale
Summary: A happy Ferengi only wants things he can easily replace; things he can always acquire if he works hard enough. And a miserable Ferengi…





	Guilty as Charged

**Author's Note:**

> based off [That Deleted Scene.](http://fluorescentbrains.tumblr.com/post/148607092533/thegreenthingslivebeforetheydie) thank you [jazzypizzaz](http://jazzypizzaz.tumblr.com/) for the beta <3

“I love you.”

Quark’s reflection blinked back at him, looking a bit judgmental. The words sounded so... _Federation._

In Quark’s native dialect, “love” didn’t get its own verb. Not this kind of love, anyway. You would say something to the effect of “I would let you carry the keys to my vaults,” “my debt to you cannot be paid in latinum,” or maybe “my house is your house,” but most likely “I am the biggest idiot in the quadrant” because only an idiot would have let it get this bad--

Quark closed his eyes and pretended he was speaking to Odo.

“I would let you to carry the keys to my vaults.”

No, it was no good; the universal translator would muck it up and Odo wouldn’t get it. He’d ask— _demand_ —that Quark explain what he meant in Standard, and then Quark would lose his nerve, and he’d run back to his bar and pace around pathetically making raktajinos for the infirmary staff while Odo—

He couldn’t think it.

How could life possibly go on without Odo on the station? When Quark tried to imagine evening after evening spent tending his bar without Odo’s watchful presence, the station seemed to fall out from under him; he caught a glimpse of the years stretching out ahead panicked. Then, when he tried to face just how far he had fallen, he remembered that Odo, the stone-hearted changeling, wasn’t so stone-hearted in the end, and had been sucking face with Kira for months now, meaning he _would_ carry someone’s keys after all, just not Quark’s; but worse, much worse than all of that, in less than two weeks he was probably going to be—

“There’s something I wanted you to know… There’s something you might like to know, before… um. That you might like to know.”

Quark straightened his jacket. This wasn’t like wanting latinum, profits, dabo girls. A happy Ferengi only wants things he can easily replace; things he can always acquire if he works hard enough. And a miserable Ferengi…

“It’s something we’ve never talked about, but we’ve always… I mean it was always in the back of my mind, because it has to do with… me… and the way I… and how I always wanted to… say that I wanted…“

He hissed and turned away from the mirror.

“I don’t want this,” he muttered to the station. Its quiet hum was the only other sound in Quark’s quarters. 

Quark looked at his timepiece. Visiting hours would end in forty-five minutes. Stomach churning (for the most part not due to hunger, though he’d barely eaten all week), he took one last look in the mirror, tried to blink away the incriminating redness around his irises, and left.

* * *

Bashir gave him one of his soft-eyed looks when he granted Quark access to Odo’s room. Quark didn’t have the energy to get indignant about it. He tiptoed into the space, Odo’s cylindrical bed looming in front of him.

“I just wanted to… come by to see how you were doing…”

Quark trailed off as he realized with dismay that Odo had gotten much worse since he’d last seen him. He looked like a salamander that had found its way into someone’s home and dried up before it could find its way back out. If he died like this, he wouldn't even need to be desiccated before... _anyway_.

Odo didn’t move or react to Quark’s presence. Quark reached for a stool and pulled it over awkwardly so he could talk to Odo on his level.

“I hear the prognosis is… well…”

It hit Quark again—it had never stopped hitting him, really; he just couldn’t seem to accept it for longer than a few minutes at a time—that Odo was dying, and there was nothing at all Quark could do about it. What Quark felt now was, somehow, even worse than the helplessness he’d felt during the second occupation, and boy was that cognitively dissonant, since he was _still_ not done being mad at Odo about all that...

Some intrepid but confused parts of his brain had suggested finding a new security officer, even tracking down another baby changeling, but nothing and no one could replace Odo. It was terrifying. There was only one Odo in the entire _universe_ —only one of _his_ Odo in the entire _multiverse_ —

And he needed to stop contemplating that right now or he was going to have a full blown panic attack in the middle of the infirmary.

Odo turned to look at him, but said nothing. Quark gulped.

“There’s something you might like to know, before…” _Don’t think about that! But I have to think about it or I’ll never get the rest out--_ “Something we've never talked about... even though I'm sure it's always been... in the back of our minds…”

Odo wasn’t reacting at all; he lay as still as crumbling stone. Bashir had said he hadn’t been able to change form in days. Quark knew that alone would put Odo in terrible pain, even aside from the other effects of his illness.

Something sank inside of Quark. What was he _doing_ here? What use did Odo have for Quark’s useless sentiment, incomprehensible even to himself?

“It has to do… with… the...”

Either it would mean nothing to him, as Quark had always suspected, and he will have wasted Odo’s limited time--or worse, Odo might actually get _sad_ and try to console Quark in some way, and Odo was already in so much pain...

Besides, what use could Odo possibly have for a confession from Quark if it didn’t give him a pretext for throwing him in a holding cell?

Now, that. That was an idea.

“...The Tilaven art thefts. I think I know who stole the holosculptures.”

Odo’s eyes widened, and he shifted a little as if to move towards Quark, who nearly choked on his own heart.

“Tell me,” Odo asked, voice thin. He almost sounded pleading, but that was of course impossible because Odo never pleaded.

“On second thought,” Quark swallowed his heart back into place, “why bother?”

“What?” Odo stared up at him, confused. Under any other circumstance, Quark would have fun with the lying and the snide bantering, but now it felt like the most exhausting feat he had ever undertaken; his trip up that Exchequer-forsaken mountain included. Quark wished he could lean over and just bury his face in Odo’s shoulder and not have to say anything more. He wished that Odo wished he would do that.

“It’s not like you’re in any shape to do anything about it. Forget I brought it up.”

“I’ve spent nine years working on that case,” Odo growled, louder this time. Good, that was more familiar.

“I know. That’s why it’s such a shame you won’t have time to close it before you--”

Odo grunted, lifting himself up on one elbow, then the other, until he was sitting upright. He turned to glower at Quark through his cracked face. “You’re going to tell me exactly what you know and you’re going to do it right now.”

Quark plastered on his best salesman’s grin. If there was anything Odo would live for, it was an unsolved case. “Oh. Suddenly you're not so sick after all. You want to crack the case? Then stop malingering and get back to work.”

Odo stared at him in open surprise. Quark hopped off the stool and heaved another smile with about as much ease as lifting fifty bars of latinum. “When you do,” he said, “you know where to find me.”

He continued to drag that weight along behind him as he left the infirmary.

**Author's Note:**

> "But if I gave you what you're asking for  
> You know you wouldn't want it anymore  
> If I gave you what you're asking for  
> You know you wouldn't want it anymore  
> So I won't  
> No no no no no I won't."
> 
> \--[Guilty as Charged,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoB3_HmBFjU) Chairlift
> 
> (I may write an epilogue to this if the mood strikes, to give it a happy ending? regardless, just to clarify, they ARE in love and they ARE gonna get married someday, if anyone was concerned)


End file.
